Red Sweat
by Onions Make Me Cry
Summary: Sometimes, there are some places that are impossible to forget about. Despite how ever badly you might try to want to. Jimmy/Gary ongoing


Author's Note: Hey guys, here's part one of a joint project for BULLY, starring, as always and forever, Jimmy and Gary. It's gonna get sexy and violent, so perk up, all you sadomasochistic friends, it's a comin.

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RED SWEAT  
part one

by Onions and Faith_Harris

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Someone had told Jimmy once, the boy recalled, that you could swallow up to a _pint_ of your own blood before it made you sick.

It was funny thinking about just how much of his own blood he'd swallowed in his lifetime. James sighed, rolling his skull a little against the unforgiving floor. He had to have swallowed at least a quart, over the past six years. Though never by anything more than a mouthful at a time. The taste was weirdly good, by this point. There was something viscerally appealing about pounding someone into the ground, and the taste reflected that. Especially someone who really deserved it. And especially here, down in the Hole, where so many people had fought before him. He liked the way his muscled burned after a long fight. It kept him growling, kept him sweating, kept him on his toes. Fights like that let him do something about his life for a fucking change. Instead of waiting for some torqued-up adult to punt him around from place to place while banging his mom for a couple of months at a time, before heading for the door again. His body, Jimmy sometimes felt nowadays, was the only ally he had left that really and truly was on his side. It was the last lonely constant in his life, other than the fact that adults hated him at first sight, that big boobs always gave him a hard-on, and that he hated mastrubating under a blanket. . His body always did what was asked of it. There was that comfort. Even if Jimmy did like the taste of his own blood.

Arms spread wide in a position of surrender, the young king laid prostrate in the very center of the Hole, just above the hollow, gurgling drain. He listened to the sound of distant water traveling through the building like digestive juices, and couldn't help but smile a little. The very structure itself seemed alive to him, even in the middle of the night. The boiler also being so near by meant two things; the first of which was the harsh, wet heat of the basement air. It tasted moldy on the back of Jimmy's tongue, and a little like copper. And secondly, if the underground pipes were the intestines of Bullworth Academy, the boiler was it's heart. Everything down here moaned. It was a steady, rhythmic pulse, deep and resonant, muffled only by the grimy basement walls. Like listening to your own heart beating, it made the young king feel connected to his physical self, and late at night, when he was content to simply just sit back, and let things churn over in his head, it was soothing. It was good to come here, sometimes. Especially late at night, when Jimmy could finally set aside a little time for thought.

Before, he'd hated this place. Hated the suffocating nature of the air. Hated the rusty ladder, hated the dusty boxing bell that hung near the long-neglected judge's table. Hated the low hanging pipes, and the hot gusts of steam that sometimes interrupted his focus. But that had been before. Back when the taste of this place had laid too closely to his memories of betrayal. It had been hard to be near the Hole for a long time because of that. And it hadn't even been his fight with Russel that had been the worst of it. That night had been the beginning of a lot of terrible things.

But those things... they were different now. Jimmy was different, wasn't he? A little older. Right, and a little smarter. Not by _too_ much, but a year could be a long time when you were sixteen.

Strangely enough, it was the smell that Jimmy liked about the Hole now. No matter how long it sat unoccupied, the drain still sent up tantalizing gusts of a coppery aroma the young king found he couldn't get enough of. Like the taste of blood, or sucking on a penny, it smelled good. Though it in part must have had something to do with the rusty make of the pipes, enough people had been curb-stomped here for it to leave an impression on the ground. Despite the occasional presence of sluggish running water, the floor of the Hole remained a constant motley brown and tan that you could see even in the dark. But by this point James knew the room well enough to navigate it even in the pitch black. Like tonight... and as he laid on the cold cement, sweating a little and listening to the walls breathe, only the soft red glow of the emergency lights kept him from staring blindly into nothing.

How many days had it been, now? The thought came suddenly, and he fell to the tedious task of calculating.

Sixty... two... days of summer, and, after that, twenty days of school. Huh. Shit... Had it really already been that long?

So, that made... seventy, eighty...

_82 days.  
_

_Fuck.  
_

Jimmy inhaled the coppery air, and wondered as he had for every of the past dozen or so nights previously. Exactly, _how_ many days would it take after _82_ of them to forget what Gary Smith's face looked like?

The furnace kicked on with a terrible groan, and James stared unblinkingly into the pipes in the ceiling. Around him, the room went on as usual, offering the same benevolent indifference it always had.

It was probably thinking like that which made things worse, if he really stopped to analyze the situation. Because, to be honest? Who was he kidding? Really. What was this 'forgetting' shit all about, anyway? Like any person could forget someone like Gary... much less forget the face of the person who had personally tried to fling you off the side of a building. (and that counted as one of the nicer things.) The 'trying to forget' part really only seemed to be good for getting Jimmy to dwell on the shit that bothered him the most. The way Gary's hands flew around in the air when he had an insane idea. How he beat on Petey like the kid was an animal instead of a person. His creeping, contemplative smiles. And then a few things always came after that which should have bothered Jimmy, and yet somehow inexplicably never had. The way Gary's hair was so perfectly trimmed in the back, for example. How that leather thong around his wrist had always hurt when Gary would lean down on Jimmy's shoulder. How perfectly Gary's shoes were tied.

But there was a price to everything. Perfectly tied shoes made shit difficult for stomping on laces in the middle of a fight. You couldn't grab hair that short, unless you made a move for the top of his skull. And after being punched in the face by a fist that scrapes you with it's bracelet buckle as it shoots past, you learn to be wary of any kind of jewelry.

What had Gary said, that day? That it was time to _'separate'_ something.

The men from the boys, he'd said. The wheat from the chaff. _'and all that nonsense'_. Right. What a total fucking jackass.

"...men from the boys, huh?" Jimmy breathed, staring up into nothing, as beneath him, the drain gurgled bloody water. The scent of copper rose up around the boy's head, and he let loose a long, slow sigh.

82 days.

And counting.

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"The secret's in the sauce, kid!"

Edna exploded into laughter like a fat hyena, bits of spittle flying past her oily lips and splattering across Jimmy's cringing face.

"The sauce, huh?" Jimmy swiped a hand across his cheeks. "You keep saying that. What, is there a cat in it or something?"

The lunch lady laughed, her sagging breasts swinging like potato bags, and it was hard not to be mesmerized by their repulsive force. Reticence could be a powerful thing, the king contemplated, and he cinched his apron a little tighter around his waist. Lunch was going to be a long period.

"If only! Those little bastards are hard to come by these days, you know? They're so fast!"

Just outside the kitchen, a rabble of noisy students began their sluggish procession to the front of the lunch line as Edna glanced up to check the clock. Noon. She grinned with a mouth full of furry teeth, and momentarily turned her back on her diminutive kitchen slave. Was it noon already? Fuck. Why did time speed up when he didn't want it to, Jimmy wondered, and drag ass when he did? Detention was torture in that way. But there wasn't much he could do about it being noon now. No, it was definitely noon, and that meant one thing. Time to put out the slop buckets.

The boy sighed a little, feeling the itchy elastic of the edge of his hair net, regretting ever having complained about his mowing detentions in the past. Kitchen duty with Edna was the kind of disgusting forced servitude in small unsanitary quarters that drove vietnam vets insane during the war. And their chuck had probably at least been made of cat. Nobody knew what the hell this shit was. Peering down now into the gelatinous maroon concoction Edna had labeled on the lunch board as Salsbury Steak, the inexplicable presence of small animal bones convinced Jimmy that maybe, at least for today, he would be wiser to go with just an apple.

"is that..." the boy stared into the meat, hypnotically repulsed. "...A... squirrel jaw?"

"What's yer problem, huh? Get the lead out kid, _cummon!_" Edna yelled, turning back and shoving the lukewarm tray of steak into Jimmy's arms, and then pushing him out towards the cafeteria. Taking it with the sigh of a disgruntled DMV employee, Jimmy tromped into the open.

Hal was already there, wrapped in an apron and behind the bar like Jimmy was, though a cigarette dangled from between his lips. The Greaser shot Jimmy the stink-eye as he hauled the meaty tub onto the table, but said nothing. Hal had been serving detention with Edna every day since the new punishment had been devised. Strangely though, Jimmy hadn't heard of any trouble the fat kid had made... it seemed as if he had simply come to serve detention for lack of anything better to do. But on that first day together, when Edna had passed him a mystery burger and a pack of Marlboros, the king had decided to leave the entire subject alone. Hal had given the cafeteria lady a look so close to love-struck adoration, that it had taken Jimmy five minutes over the grease bucket trying not to throw up before he could regain his composure again.

At least serving people meant Jimmy wasn't required to chop any more expired ingredients. There was that. He only had to _dole out_ the toxic lunch specials now, which in comparison to scraping orange fuzz off the bottom of a pickled egg before he cut it into salad, was heaven. giant fork in hand, James pushed past Hal's enormous loitering figure, grabbed a pair of gloves, and returned to his post at the end of the bar. Sure, he'd have to dunk his head in bleach after the hour was over, but at least Dr. Crabblesnitch or a prefect weren't loitering over him while he worked.

"two slices, please!" Sheldon was the first in line, and he accepted his plate once it was full with a watery grimace.

Gord followed a moment later, leisurely sliding his tray along the bar. He was wearing an ochre silk scarf slung over one shoulder on top of his uniform today, and the motion of sweeping down the line set the fabric fluttering.

Jimmy raised an eyebrow dully and held up the meat fork to the well groomed boy. "Salsbury steak?"

Gord frowned, for a long moment looking like he was sucking on a lemon. "Hmmm... you know? I'm a vegetarian, Hopkins."

"You're kidding? And here I thought eating meat was kind of your thing."

"Funny! Very funny!" the puckered lips became a wry smile. "What better expert than you? But really, James, being fast food must get tiresome with all those people complaining about indigestion all the time."

"...what, is your stomach made out of cast iron or something? You fucking-"

"MOVE IT OR LOSE IT, KID!" Edna's sudden bellow from behind made Jimmy physically jump, and by the time he'd turned around and then turned back again, Gord had already begun to slide away, casting a demure look over his shoulder as he went.

Jimmy snatched Angie's plate as it came into his field of vision, barely bothering to look up this time as he tossed it back on her tray, laden with goop.

This job was such a pain in the ass. Everyone had to give him crap, didn't they? The mantra ran through James's head on a constant loop. Sucking on dog shit was on par with this. And to make matters worse, it was fucking humiliating. It had been a really long time since a prefect had been quick enough to catch Hopkins at any sort of law-breaking, and longer even after that since the redhead had been been in a situation where someone had turned away bribery. When it had finally happened and he had been caught trying to steal tests out of the teacher's lounge, Jimmy had accepted his punishment with more than a little dose of embarrassment. But, like always, he took it without complaint. He did still have a little pride. And at least he was never all that verbal about being humiliated. Listening to his thoughts, however, was another story entirely.

Fuck this. Fuck this shit so hard. This shit blew donkey balls. It blew Edna's donkey balls. It blew Edna's dog's donkey balls for quarters. The list went on. The humiliating aspect was one thing, but really, the worst part of it all was the boredom. Reticence for the mundane filled Jimmy's daily life now, in a sort of tranquil nausea of forced, repetitive actions. These days, Bullworth was a quieter place. Nothing seemed to happen. All of his ducks were in a neat little row, soldiers falling into line like he were their drill sargent, Their minor deity. Their... well... their King. Which indeed, James still was. But then, that must have been the trouble... The calm seemed dangerous, after last year. It didn't make any sense. It was ominous. And it was definitely boring. Or was it that he was just getting too lax in his leadership? The idea of shit happening under his nose without hearing about it was kind of a frightening one. Had time defiled Jimmy's hardened senses? This was, after all, the longest Jimmy had ever lived in one place, away from his mother. Or was paranoia finally beginning to creep into his mind, boring a permanent hole? The quiet was obviously getting to him, in a seriously unhealthy way. And subconsciously, a little voice whispered the reason. Scowling, Jimmy loaded Eunice's plate extra high and slid it back at her, telling the voice to shut up. It didn't.

What was the count today?

Eighty seven days.

Mother _fucker_.

It wasn't liked he _missed_ Gary or anything. No. Definitely not. Far from it. Fucking polar opposite from that. Gary was a complete psychopath. He was a dickwad. A puke. A shithead. A sadist. A traitor. A cheater.

Really.

So why had everything gone so quiet? Why was Jimmy dumping salsbury steak onto Russel's plate and thinking about upending the tub of meat over his head if not just for a change of pace?

Something in the tray beneath him burbled, and Jimmy grimaced. (No, definitely not cat meat. Maybe it was groundhog.) A quick stab stopped the bubbles.

"Nice hat, Jimmy!" The thuggish chuckle of jocks turned the grimace into a scowl, and the king looked up in time to see Ted and Damon shoving their way up the line.

James jabbed his fork at the first of the two, feeling a sudden flush of anger. "You better watch that shit, Thompson, or I'll kick the fucking shit out of you, alright? I'll knock your _fucking_ teeth out!"

Ted's smile dropped immediately, replaced with a dumbfounded look that matched his best friend's. They were quiet a moment, as Jimmy served their plates, before Ted leaned in a little, sporting an apologetic expression. "Hey, Jim, I'm sorry, man. It was just a joke."

"Forget it. Here." Jimmy tersely replied, handing them their plates. The jocks took them without reply, and moved off in unusual silence.

Christ, and it wasn't like Gary had even ever been that nice to any of them. Especially not Petey. Their one friend. Gary had kicked that kid around like a lost dog. Sure, he'd never made him bleed, but a good gratuitous joke about sexual orientation coupled with a boot to the nuts could really toll on a guy's self-esteem. And frankly, Jimmy was shocked Petey was as well put-together as he was, all things considered. So shocked, that it was nearly impossible to think about what Pete's life had been like with Gary before Jimmy had come. Jimmy had heard a rumor that Petey and Gary had been friends as small children, but entering the creepy realm of thinking of Gary as ever having been a toddler made the king's head ache.

No. Gary was, and would always be friend to nobody. Maybe that was it, Jimmy thought. That was what had left such a sting on his mind. Maybe that was the reason now that Jimmy couldn't stop the procession of thoughts that drove him into the Hole every other night, if not just for a minute of peace. Gary had lied. Gary had never been interested in being friends. Gary didn't 'do' friends.

And yet...

"thanks Jimmy!" Mandy smiled as he served her.

...for a while...

Another plate. Another steak.

it had really felt like...

Plate. This one had a chip in the side. It vanished in gravy sauce.

... Gary had actually... sincerely...

plate. slop. next.

...liked him.

James sighed, looking down into the muck sitting on the counter in front of him. These things that he did, the repetitive procession of the same schedule of activities, they were beginning to mess with his head.

The next plate clattered into Jimmy's view, and he swiped it up and began the mechanical act of skewering a piece of runaway steak. It seemed like it was getting harder to find the little suckers in the swamp of sauce they swam in, and as he rooted around, Jimmy secretly suspected it was because somewhere in there, something still had a pulse.

"A little to the left,"

James sighed, and stabbed to the right, ignoring the obnoxious advice from above his skull. "I got it, thanks."

The sound of sucking teeth. "... missed again."

Eyes involuntarily rising to the voice, Jimmy's hand froze in a perfect fist, forgotten skewer poised up towards the ceiling like a stalagmite.

Gary smiled smugly from his position on the other side of the bar, arms folded across his neatly ironed vest.

Somewhere in his throat, Jimmy made a gurgling noise. But the words fell short of their delivery. When Gary continued to stand there, Jimmy wondered, fleetingly, if this kind of hallucination could be cured with electro-shock therapy. People didn't just show up when you thought about them. Unless you were crazy. Or was Gary still crazy?

Wait...

Who was crazy?

Nothing seemed particularly out of the ordinary about Gary's physical presence, other than the fact that he had been exiled from the school and it's grounds at the end of the last school year. He seemed, though it was strange, not to look any different at all. Every one of his hairs were still eerily in place. The uniform was still the same wicked teal. He was still tidy. Well shaven. Maybe slightly paler. But these things did nothing but help to constitute more of a reason to hate him. Jimmy stared with a sense of disbelief, more than anything else. What was going on? How could he be standing there? And with absolutely no hand risen to him from anywhere nearby? How could this be happening? And, for the fucking love of God, why? Why? Why were no prefects hauling ass across the room to full-body tackle the wayward ex-resident? Possibly into a waiting line of students and cafeteria chairs? Where was Dr. Crabblesnitch, with a cadre of police officers at his side? Or, better yet, where was the magician that was about to leap out from behind a table, and shout 'surprise!' to reveal the big fucking cosmic joke that this thing obviously was, before turning the smirking boy back into a disgruntled, top hat dwelling rabbit? The only part of the situation that seemed to be reasonable at all was the faint edge of fear to the students standing nearby. A few were eyeballing Gary with looks of mistrust and suspicion, but none so far had dared to speak on the subject, much less speak to him directly. Gary simply looked at home. As if he belonged exactly where he was standing, and for a wild moment, Jimmy had to forcibly contain himself from leaping over the counter and stabbing his meat fork as hard as he could into his rival's twinkling right eyeball.

Opening his mouth, Jimmy attempted to make a retort again. Still, no sound came.

Gary slowly shook his head, still smirking. "What's wrong boy, is Petey stuck down a _well_? Speak! "

"......... what are you doing here?" Every forced word tasted like sand.

"_Well_, James, I'm pretty sure I'm getting _lunch_. Nice dress, by the way. Has that _grease_-whore, Edna, made you her underage _boyfriend_ yet, or is it the other way around, like I've been hearing? Toothpic in a mayonnaise jar, Hopkins. Classy."

From down the line, Hal shot Jimmy a scorching, suspicious glower. James ignored it, in favor of remembering he had fingers, and forcibly relaxing his iron grip on the end of his meat fork. Suffering from carpel-tunnel wouldn't do him any favors later, when he planned on sinking his fist into Gary's kidney until the bastard started pissing blood. Already, that plan was developing. It was like clockwork in his brain... like breath. Left hook. Right punch. Fist full of hair. Gary's nose snapping on the concrete floor. It would be fun to watch his blood dribble down the drain. Down there, where the school walls could watch it happen. Take him down to the Hole. One more stain for the floor.

"No."

"Too _bad_. I know how you like putting your pickle on everybody's plate, _friend_." Gary's smirk became a leer. "But at least you don't have _AIDS_ yet. _Right_?"

"...No."

Slowly, coherence crept back into Jimmy's expression, along with the beginnings of boiling anger, and he finally glanced down again to stab a piece of steak for Gary's plate. The meat landed on the chipped dish with a wet splat, and he shoved it aggressively back at the tidy looking teenager. Gary took it without looking down, and stood instead for a precious moment with eyes that lingered at Jimmy's jugular. But after a contemplative moment, the taller boy sucked in his breath, and offered an ominous smile.

"See you in class, Jimmy-boy."

"...Yeah."

Yeah.

See you.

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Sometimes Petey wondered if any part of his life at school was ever really worth it. Most days, he had a vague sort of hope that his education would enable him to choose a profession that, at the very least, would pay him well. He would get rich, marry some quiet woman, and spend the rest of his life in peaceful isolation. Better even if he was a CEO of some company that paid him a lot of money, but expected very little. Though it was nice to get the recognition, being Head Boy had never really been all it was cracked up to be. The scrutiny sometimes could be worse than the quiet. Even if the position _had_ been kindly meant.

He found Jimmy back at the dorm, standing at the end of the hall.

"... You _knew_, didn't you?" The redhead accused point blank, as Petey stopped at his elbow. The king stood in front of a large mound of luggage, which had been stacked in a neat pile in front of the door. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Petey frowned uncomfortably, looking away. "...I... just didn't."

The door Jimmy was pointedly staring at had been recently replaced. Jimmy had personally made sure the room had been emptied out over the beginning of the last summer, when he had put his fist through the wood. This new one was of a nicer quality than most of the others along the hall, and sported the healthy shine of a fresh coat of varnish. It also had a name placard, which seemed to be the king's point of specific interest.

"I _really_ could have used a warning, Pete. I _really_ would have appreciated that."

"..I'm sorry."

"How come he gets to be here?"

"Money."

"And how long did you know about this shit? That he was coming back?"

Since being born? How did someone know when they were about to die? They just... _knew._

"...a while."

When the quiet settled, Petey began feeling faintly sick. He didn't want to do this anymore. He despised himself enough without having to suffer the weight of the look on Jimmy's face. That sweaty, agitated thing. What was that? Disappointment? And then there was that weird flicker of hurt underneath a usually dull range of emotions. It cut Pete internally. It hadn't seemed like such a betrayal at the time, when he'd kept that secret to himself... but now, things felt different. And Petey was sorry for it. Couldn't Jimmy get that? Didn't he know Gary well enough already? Didn't he see what Gary was like? It was too much. All of this had always been too much for Petey to care to handle. It was just... sometimes there were things he didn't think Jimmy would get. At least for a while, Petey had been able to pretend that Gary was coming back to live like he had when they were younger, when the taller boy hadn't been quite so cruel. When it had just been the two of them. That had felt nice, even if the truth was actually a lot uglier.

"Yeah, well... thanks a lot."

There was a little bitterness in the redhead's reply, but it seemed to Pete that his friend's heart just wasn't in it. Jimmy sniffed, and raised a thick hand to scratch at the back of his neck. He looked thoughtful... a strange expression for the king, all things considered, and Petey blinked as a realization came over him.

Maybe... Jimmy had been waiting too.

There it was. Right there, in the crinkle in the corner of his already squinty gaze. It wasn't angry, or happy... but it was apprehensive. Like the look Pete's father always had when he would look up at the sky just before a thunder storm. It was that silent momentary heartbeat where he would forget to breathe, eyes on the distant horizon.

How long had they been waiting together in silence like this? How long had they been waiting for this to happen? Those were questions Petey knew he would never, ever ask.

"...where is he now?"

Silence over then, huh? Internally, Petey let loose a low groan. So it was back to business, as usual. Silently hoping that their mutual (ex) friend's re-enrollment back into school wouldn't duplicate the volcanic eruption of violence that had been their last year, the skinny boy wedged his hands under his armpits and shrugged.

"..um, in the office, I think." Maybe. Or possibly at a board meeting in Hell. Either or. "Jimmy... you, you aren't going to try and _fight_ him again, are you?"

Because that would be idiotic. Stupid to the magnitude of ten. Stupid to the power of twenty. _Thirty._ Or potentially even higher. Didn't he get it? Gary had won. He had _won._ The battle, the war, everything. His parents had bought him back into Bullworth, and money had always talked louder than actions. Especially here. If Jimmy tried to beat the shit out of Gary again, it would only end in Jimmy's eventual expulsion from the school. And if Jimmy went away, all hope for a peaceful Bullworth would be lost.

James gave the other boy a judgmental snort. "Uh, yeah, Petey. I am. I'm gonna kick the _shit_ out of him."

Of course.

Of course he was.

Going from queasy to nauseous, Pete gave his friend a sickly smile. Silence came again, and both boys stood shoulder-to-shoulder, staring at the nameplate screwed into the wood of the new door.

_'Room 6: Gary Smith'_

Welcome Back.

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TBC

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